


a thousand eyes but one

by monstermash



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Aromantic Asexual Maya, Asexual Character, Bisexual Character, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Rare Pairings, Strangers to Friends to Lovers, Tags to be added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2019-12-27 04:40:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18297014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monstermash/pseuds/monstermash
Summary: “I like his attitude,” Gaige grins, and Axton feels a wave of exasperation wash over him.Part of him is now worrying that this’ll turn out to be more like herding cats than the challenge he’d been looking for.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> with borderlands 3 being announced i've decided to replay borderlands 2. and also write fic for it. 
> 
> i've really got no excuse for this except im gay and i gotta say, i'm kinda disappointed about the lack of axton/krieg on here, although that's understandable because maya/krieg is really popular. i don't mind it, but honestly maya & krieg are more of a BroTP for me. 
> 
> idk about y'all but i hope krieg will at least make an appearance in 3.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> since i haven't played the first borderlands (or tftbl), i have a question: is the status of earth ever mentioned? like, do people still live there or...? i know people live on different planets and all that, but is earth still a thing?

It’s hotter than Satan’s ass crack in the middle of summer as the sun beats down from on high while Axton waits at the virtually empty train station.

He’s been here for at least an hour, maybe two, sweat gathering between his shoulders and making his shirt stick uncomfortably. It reminds him a bit of Demophon. Although, on Demophon there’d been…

The diamond ring sits heavy in his pocket – he doesn’t know why he’s kept it _(that’s a lie. He and Sarah may not be together anymore, but it feels wrong to let go of it, even if it would fetch a pretty good price to the right buyer),_ but he takes it with him always, no matter where he’s going or what he’s doing. It never felt right to leave behind in whatever temporary accommodations he’d been staying in, so Axton’s taken to just keeping the ring on him.

Sometimes he’ll even take it out and look at it. Maybe hold it up to the sunlight and watch the rays of light shine through, get lost in the way it glitters brighter than his current situation.

Ugh, he hates getting like this whenever he’s been sitting idle for too long.

Being bored always leaves him in some sort of introspection limbo.

Waiting is his least favorite part. Sure, he can do it, been military long enough that he can tolerate it for the most part – being in the army is five tenths sitting on your ass and doing nothing. Although, he’d at least had a group of people to do nothing with instead of sitting alone and trying to not let his mind wander too far down _‘What If’_ Boulevard.

But he’s not military anymore. Hasn’t been for about a year and some change now. Which is why he’s sitting at a train station in the middle of the desert, alone, baking in the sun.

“Leave the military, come to Pandora, stare at stuff...” he says under his breath to no one in particular.

Letting out a heavy sigh, Axton tries leaning back at an awkward angle on the bench in a sad attempt for some shade.

(He almost falls off.)

Anyway, he’s waiting for a train because he’s decided to try his hand at Vault hunting, and he knows at least three of the people he’s grouping up with, having done some jobs with them here and there during his short time on Pandora. The fourth is some kind of high school dropout who is apparently a robotics genius, if he’s remembering right.

Axton hears the train long before he sees it.

\---

At the time, he hadn’t seen it coming at all.

_(But now though… yeah. Yeah, he can definitely see it.)_

Hell, the fact that he was sitting in the brig should’ve been one big flashing neon sign of _‘Danger! Everything’s about to go to shit!’_ But Axton had always been more of a glass half full type anyway.

So he hadn’t thought much of it. Hadn’t thought much of the cold metal walls, the nearly empty and completely impersonal interrogation room he’d been escorted to.

Hadn’t thought too much of Sarah being the one to come in to talk to him.

No, Axton just had a grin on his face, happy to see her.

“Axton, the rest of the battalion ships out to Themis tomorrow, and I don't want you with us. Not as a soldier, and... not as a husband.”

It takes a moment for her words to sink in, but when they do, it feels like someone’s just punched him in the throat.

“What? What the hell, Sarah—” he starts but she cuts him off, her voice brooking no argument or interruption.

“Remember Hestias?” Sarah asks, and yeah, Axton remembers Hestias. “Instead of protecting the dignitary assigned to your command, you put a tracker on him, gave him to the enemy, tracked them to their base, and blew it up. With the dignitary still inside.”

“Yeah, which was awesome! You can't pretend that wasn't awesome.”

And okay, that probably wasn’t the right thing to say, because there’s that crease in her brow, the one she gets whenever she’s exasperated or irritated or both.

“Demophon. Thrace. Tantalus,” Sarah lists and there’s so much dread building in Axton’s stomach that he can practically _taste_ it. “You've consistently prioritized personal glory over following orders. I don't need a soldier like that.”

_(She doesn’t need a husband like that either.)_

A tense silence settles between them and there’s sickening lurch behind his ribs because Sarah… Sarah’s looking at him like she doesn’t even know him anymore. Like he’s a stranger.

His throat is dry and his heartbeat is a little too fast, and it’s a lot like when Sarah finally said _‘yes’_ except this isn’t anywhere _near_ as nice because this feels perilously close to betrayal and rejection.

“So what now? You gonna turn me over to the firing squad? Unless they've changed the rules on me, I'm pretty sure semper fi means _‘forever,’”_ Axton says with far more confidence than he’s feeling right now. 

Shit, he’d have been happy with just being able to keep his voice even. And yeah, there’s a bitter anger tinging his words, but fuck… He’d never thought five years of marriage would end with him facing a firing squad.

“You are correct. At 0900 tomorrow, the MPs will escort you to the brig where you will await your execution,” she says it so nonchalantly one might think she was just talking about the weather. But then Sarah continues, her face softening a bit around the edges. “As your commanding officer, I cannot officially suggest you go AWOL, _tonight,_ and try your luck on the border planets.”

It dawns on him just exactly the kind of risk Sarah is taking, because this is a Dahl _interrogation room_ and their conversation is more than likely being recorded right now. Okay, so maybe it won’t end. Not in the way he thought it would a few moments ago, anyway. 

_(But it still ends, one way or another.)_

“Too bad. That would have been good advice,” he replies with a wry smile and Sarah returns it with a faint one of her own as she leans over the table and presses something small into his hand, curling his fingers over it. “What's this?”

“My wedding ring. You can keep it – I never liked diamonds.”

“Ouch.”

Axton meant it as a joke, but Sarah knows him too well.

\---

The last thing Axton was expecting when Maya stepped onto the train was the Psycho trailing after her, which is why he’s got his rifle trained on the guy reflexively.

Judging by the other two guns pointing at the Psycho, Axton’s guessing that Salvador and Zer0 weren’t expecting this turn of events either.

“He saved my life,” Maya says, fixing them all with an unimpressed expression. “So put your guns away.”

No one moves.

Except for Maya, because she plants herself between the Psycho and them, staring them down.

“Hurt _him,_ and I hurt _you.”_

A little reluctantly, Axton holsters his gun again, Salvador and Zer0 following suit. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t seriously questioning Maya’s judgement right now, because _really? She brought a_ Psycho _along?_ With a quiet sigh, Axton warily takes a look at the newest surprise addition to the group; the guy is a little on the tall side for a Psycho, but he’s got the weird mask they tend to wear, although only one brown eye is visible.

Oh, and he’s carrying what looks like a modified buzz-saw. Great.

“So, why are you here?” he asks the Psycho.

Which just gets a short burst of maniacal _(giddy?)_ laughter out of the guy.

“I’m here to shank and smile!”

He really doesn’t know what sort of answer he was expecting. It isn’t the worst response, but it isn’t exactly confidence inspiring that the guy won’t turn on them at the drop of a hat. Axton should probably keep his expectations nice and low, but he—

“I like his attitude,” Gaige grins, and Axton feels a wave of exasperation wash over him.

Part of him is now worrying that this’ll turn out to be more like herding cats than the challenge he’d been looking for.

\---

Everything is dark and numb, and the howling wind makes his headache worse.

“Great – another dead Vault Hunter. Handsome Jack’s been busy.”

_Another?_

The ice is practically seeping into him, and it’s a struggle, but he manages to open his eyes to a landscape of pale blue and night. There’s snow and half buried, frozen solid bodies as far as the eye can see; a spike of fear runs up his spine – or maybe it’s just more snow – because he doesn’t see any of the others. But there’s an annoying robot trying to shovel through the snow.

Axton starts dragging himself towards it; he doesn’t really have much of a plan right now other than _‘Don’t Freeze to Death.’_

“Wait a minute – you’re not dead!” the little robot exclaims, and Axton kind of tunes its rambling out as it goes off on a tangent. His vision is fading fast – great, he really _is_ going to freeze to death out here because the robot won’t stop talking – when he notices some of the snow moving.

And out pops the Psycho from the train with a roar, fists raised, and _how the hell is this guy not freezing he isn’t even wearing a shirt._

“Oh! _Two_ minions. Perfect!”

\---

Turns out that the Psycho’s name is Krieg. Axton recognizes it as a word from one of the various home world languages – German, he thinks, if he’s remembering right.

It looks like it’s just him and Krieg who landed here in part of the train wreckage. Which, y’know, isn’t the worst possible outcome; best case scenario – which is out the fucking window at this point – would’ve been if they all landed in the same spot, and worst case scenario…

Well, worst case scenario is that no one else survived the train.

And he’d rather not think about that too much, because Maya, Zer0, and Salvador are the closest he’s got to friends on Pandora since his desertion from Dahl, and Gaige, she’s just a kid. Far too young to die even though Axton knows that there have been younger who have died on this planet in worse ways.

Either way, he’s really not doing himself any favors dwelling on it too much right now.

Seeing as how this part of the ice shelf practically gets little to no reception for the ECHO communicator, they won’t know what happened to the others until they get to Sanctuary anyway.

That is, if Krieg doesn’t burn his face off with how close he’s sitting to the fireplace in Claptrap’s house.

“Don’t sit so close, you’ll melt that mask to your face,” Axton tells him – and wow, he’s getting a faint sense of déjà vu because he remembers hearing something similar when he was a kid – and Krieg just narrows his eye at him.

Axton rolls his eyes, but Krieg grudgingly leans away from the flames, sitting back against the couch they dragged over.

They sit there in surprisingly comfortable silence, although that's probably mostly due to their exhaustion than anything else, Axton slumped on one end of the couch and Krieg sprawled on the other end.

\---

_He dreams of the house he grew up in, now half rotted and dilapidated._

_Sarah’s there, diamonds where her gray eyes should be._

_They’re both standing by a grave in the front yard and he’s looking at himself laying down in it._

_“Such a shame,” Sarah says, her diamond eyes glittering in the misplaced desert sun as she looks at him. “I never liked diamonds anyway.”_

\---

The walk to Liar’s Berg honestly isn’t even a long one; it’s mostly just a matter of finding a way up the icy crag behind Claptrap’s place and out of the Windshear Waste. Y’know, _after_ they kill Knuckle Dragger and her pack of bullymongs.

Which isn’t too bad, because Axton and Krieg fight surprisingly well together.

No, the real problem is Claptrap trying to play _‘I Spy’_ while blind the whole way there.

\---

Even in the freezing cold, bullymongs stink like they’ve done nothing but roll around in a trash heap for days.

(Considering the state of Liar’s Berg and the surrounding area, that’s entirely possible.)

Which means Axton isn’t the least bit surprised when a couple of them show up while he and Krieg are picking off the remaining bandits. His turret is busy putting holes in one that just tore a bandit in half on the other side of the small settlement, which leaves the other bullymong to him and Krieg.

He is a bit surprised when he sees Krieg’s buzz axe go flying by and embedding itself in a bullymong’s eye. The great big beast roars, Krieg roars back, and Axton lifts his rifle to take aim as it rushes toward them.

It’s a little difficult lining up a shot, because Claptrap won’t stop flailing around blindly, and right as he _finally_ has its head in his crosshairs a shot rings out. And it didn’t come from him. The ground shakes a bit as the bullymong drops, blood and bits of gore staining the snow, and there stands Krieg with a rifle he more than likely picked off of a dead bandit.

Perfect rifle posture and everything; it makes Axton think of every Dahl firing range he’d seen during his ten year military career.

After a moment, Krieg’s posture slouches a bit, going back to what it normally is. Brow drawing together in thought, Axton moves over to the dead bullymong, tugging the buzz axe out of its skull. In the year Axton’s spent on Pandora, he doesn’t think he’s ever seen a Psycho shoot a rifle with proper posture, much less an actual military stance. They tend to fight with axes or grenades, and when they _do_ use guns, they tend to be shotguns.

Krieg looks a little out of it when Axton can actually get a good look at him, almost glaring at the battered bandit rifle he’s holding, but the Psycho gives him a grunt that he thinks might mean _‘thanks’_ when Axton hands the axe back.

There’s a question on the tip of his tongue, but then Hammerlock comes out of his house, and the chance is gone and forgotten.

\---

Hammerlock is grateful enough to let them crash at his place – instead of squatting in one of the many abandoned homes – after they clear the graveyard and frozen pond of bullymongs.

There’s no couch for them camp out on, but Axton’s learned to sleep anywhere, and since Krieg immediately flops down onto the floor by the fireplace Axton’s pretty sure he doesn’t care too much either.

At least it’s warm and more secure than Claptrap’s place had been.

With the blackout curtains drawn together, the front room he and Krieg are staying in would be pitch black if it weren’t for the fireplace. Turning over his ECHO, Axton can’t help but wonder who Angel is and why she’s helping them, and if she’s helping the others; she hasn’t said and he hasn’t really had the chance to ask. He should, the next time she talks to them.

Maybe then he could stop worrying.

Krieg grunts from where he’s sprawled out on the floor next to him. “Shut your screaming brain up.”

Letting out a quiet huff, Axton sets his ECHO down with the rest of his gear.

“My brain’s not screaming.”

All that does is earn him a narrow eyed look that reminds him a lot of the surly cat that used to hang out around the barracks. Y’know, if the cat was also unhinged. Which it probably was, all things considered. Like the fact that the local wildlife always gave it a wide berth was probably a good indicator that something was up with it.

“Pants on fire,” Krieg shoots back before his eye slides shut with finality.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Here are some Borderlands 2 codes.](http://vaulthuntercollective.tumblr.com/post/183782914274/some-shift-codes-from-the-borderlands) (they should work. hopefully.)
> 
> also, what _are_ those things above Axton's left eyebrow? So far I'm just assuming that they're dermal piercings, but still. _what are they?_

Axton wakes, bleary eyed and still tired, to the sounds of the howling winds beating against the side of Hammerlock’s house and the pops and sizzling of something cooking.

A glance to the right reveals that Axton is alone, the spot where Krieg had been sprawled out now empty. His brow furrows in confusion for a moment, because he can’t have slept late enough for the guy to have wandered off. And honestly, Axton probably wouldn’t give it a second thought if Krieg _did_ wander off, but he’s got a niggling feeling in the back of his mind that Maya would, ten out of ten, kick his ass if he let that happen.

Not like Krieg can’t take care of himself – he’s lived this long on Pandora _and_ survived a train crash – but Axton would prefer _not_ risking the wrath of a siren.

It’s only when he pushes himself upright that Axton notices the sounds of conversation on the other side of the room.

“Yes, I've seen my fair share of danger — the odd skag ambush here, a stalker mauling there. Really gives one an appreciation for the creatures of this planet. And a hateful desire to wipe them all out.” Sounds like Hammerlock, and since he wouldn’t allow Claptrap past the front door, Axton’s gonna assume he’s talking to—

“Look into the heart of darkness and eat it all!”

Yeah, that's Krieg all right.

Well, that solves that mystery which wasn’t even much of a mystery at all. There’s a laugh and Axton hauls himself onto his feet, grabbing his ECHO on the way. Right, he should be getting up. They probably have a lot of work to do before going after Flynt and getting the hell out of Liar’s Berg.

“Your enthusiasm reminds me of my younger days…” Hammerlock says almost wistfully, nodding at Axton as he takes a seat next to Krieg at the table, while the older man flips something over in the pan. “I remember when my father first brought me to Pandora. I was six years old, and had used colorful language in polite company. Father thought it proper to abandon me here for a month to teach me the error of my ways. It was rough going at first, but after I throttled my twentieth skag into submission, I grew to enjoy the place.”

And that… that actually explains a lot about Hammerlock. More than Axton ever really wanted to know, honestly.

He sits there, half asleep, listening to Hammerlock and Krieg carry on their weird conversation that they’re both engrossed in. At least, until Krieg decides to start annoying Axton by poking at the dermal piercings above Axton’s left eyebrow and snickering like mad when Axton swats at his hand. He’s starting to regret getting up. Should’ve just stayed in front of the fireplace for another hour, or until Hammerlock finished cooking.

Look, Axton is by no means a morning person. Or a Pandoran afternoon person, if you want to get technical. It’s another one of those little things about the military he doesn’t miss, being up before the sun.

Although once there’s food in front of him – fried bullymong by the looks of it, and while it’s not the best tasting thing, Axton’s definitely had worse – he’s a lot more amenable to being awake and with his attention focused on keeping his stomach from eating itself. The last time he ate was before he got on the train; there hadn’t been much at Claptrap’s place in the way of food, other than dozens of frozen corpses and Axton wasn’t _that_ desperate.

Fiddling with his ECHO, disappointment settles heavy in Axton’s stomach when there aren’t any new messages from their scattered group or from the strange AI called Angel. There’s something gnawing away at him and it isn’t hunger. Axton lets out a hiss when Krieg jabs him in the ribs with a too sharp elbow and he elbows him back.

“The fuck was that for?”

“Quit dreaming life away. Captain Marlow speaks.”

 _‘Captain Marlow?’_ Axton mouths at Hammerlock, not really sure what Krieg’s talking about, but the man waves it off dismissively.

“As I was saying,” Hammerlock starts again. “If you’re to survive out here for any length of time, you’ll need a better shield. I humbly suggest paying a visit to the old Crimson Raider safe house. You’ll need to take the elevator up there.”

\---

The Southern Shelf is crawling with bandits, which frankly baffles Axton; the inhabitants of Liar’s Berg were all wiped out, except for Hammerlock, and there aren’t any other towns in this region.

There’s no one here for them to rob, but they’re still here.

Krieg on the other hand seems to be pretty content with this, seeing as how he gleefully buries his buzz axe in the nearest moving target, occasionally using the rifle he picked up from one of the dead bandits yesterday to land some pretty spectacular shots. Axton’s actually pretty impressed. He even lets out an appreciative whistle when Krieg manages a shot that lands in the dead center of a bandit’s heart.

Clearing out the safe house is simple enough between the two of them, an oddly efficient duo, that pulling out his turret doesn’t even cross Axton’s mind.

Of course, that isn’t to say they don’t run into any problems. Namely, the elevator won’t start when he tries the lever. There’s just some sparks and the light blinks an angry red.

“Great,” Axton sighs as he pulls up Hammerlock’s name on his ECHO’s HUD. “Hammerlock, we’ve hit a snag. Elevator’s not working.”

There’s a crackle on the line and then, “Of course, I forgot – the safe house power box stopped working after Claptrap attempted to… _integrate_ with it.”

A sound of disgust comes from Krieg and Axton’s nose scrunches up in agreement.

“Ah, what a kidder!” Claptrap says over the ECHO, trying a little too hard to play it off as a joke which means it’s absolutely, 100% true. Axton rubs at his temples, trying to soothe the headache building behind his eyes; when he’d started Vault hunting just a short couple days ago, this is _not_ how he thought things would go, being stranded in an icy wasteland and learning things he emphatically _never asked to hear._ “Just get a new fuse for the elevator, and ignore what he said about that power box.”

“Trust me, we’ll be trying,” Axton says before closing out the line.

\---

 _Fuck,_ Axton thinks, sprawled out on his back in the snow and wheezing, waiting for his lungs to remember how to actually work; about halfway through their fight against the slightly bigger bandit encampment while looking for a fuse for the elevator, a pack of bullymongs showed up and one of them knocked the wind right out of him. _Gonna feel that in the morning._

Someone comes into view above him, blotting out the sky – hooded and poorly constructed gas mask, yeah it’s a bandit – and he hears the cocking of a gun over the sounds of bullymongs and gunshots. Axton is distinctly aware that his gun is just barely out of reach, his turret too, but he’s still winded, his brain still trying to reorient itself from being flung clear across the encampment.

_If I live that long._

A shot rings out and Axton blinks up at the bandit, who falls off to the side.

And then Krieg’s mask pops up, looking down at Axton with one wide brown eye. From what very little Axton can see of Krieg’s face, he thinks it’s safe to say that Krieg is grinning like mad under his mask.

“Get back up on your tap dancing feet, soldier boy! You’ve got more people to maim.”

Letting himself be hauled up when Krieg reaches down, Axton can feel his stomach lurch as the world finally rights itself.

“Thanks,” he blinks hard and claps Krieg on the shoulder before finally turning his attention back to the fight at hand. “Didn’t know you cared.”

“Don’t make this weird,” Krieg tells him, but he claps Axton on the shoulder too, a little too much strength behind it since it makes Axton rock back on his heels, and dives back into the fight headfirst. Literally.

\---

Since they’re already here, Axton figures that they might as well clear out Blackburn Cove of bandits before leaving Liar’s Berg far behind them.

Well, that, and the fact that as soon as Hammerlock brought up the Midge-Mong, Krieg had latched onto the idea of fighting it and couldn’t be swayed from it.

And this isn’t Axton’s first rodeo; he’s taken down bandit hideouts before, but that hadn’t really been a duo thing. Not that he and Krieg are a duo. Sure, they fight really well together, but Krieg is Maya’s tag-along, not Axton’s.

But Krieg turns out to be half decent with a sniper, and far more patient with taking down the rakks circling overhead than Axton would’ve been if he’d been doing this solo.

 _“There’s more to him than meets the eye,”_ Maya had told Axton, moments before everything had gone pear-shaped on the train. With everything that he’s just observed in the past few days, Axton is willing to concede that maybe she has a point. 

_Maybe._

It’s a struggle to keep all that in mind when the guy is literally yelling about nipple salads in the middle of a firefight.

\---

There’s the familiar sound of barrels exploding one right after another; Axton doesn’t see it happen, but he’s got a feeling it’s Krieg’s doing since the noise is coming from where he ran off to, chasing after the Midge-Mong in maniacal delight, leaving Axton to pick off the remaining bandits.

Axton doesn’t really care as long as Krieg comes back in mostly one piece. They don’t really have the cash to spare on frequent uses of New-U.

\---

They hole up in the room the Midge-Mong busted out of; a nasty ice storm rolled in when they were half way through looting bodies.

There’s only the one set of double doors in or out of the room, so at least they only have one access point to worry about on the off chance there are any stragglers. Axton sets up his turret anyway. He’d like to get some decent sleep because they’re not going anywhere until the storm lets up.

Krieg seems antsy though.

He keeps pacing the room, fingers twitching and fidgeting.

“You okay there?” Axton asks, continuing to haul as many of the threadbare blankets behind the counter; he’s normally not that picky, but he doesn’t trust these couches, rusty springs poking through the stained fabric. He’d prefer sleeping on the floor than risk getting tetanus. That and the counter provides better cover.

Krieg stops, going stock still for all of a moment before he starts pacing again, and Axton can practically _feel_ the distress rolling off the guy in waves.

Something’s clearly set him off, but Axton has no clue what it could possibly be.

“You’re gonna scream, just like she did; open mouth, open heart, blood and noise forever piercing my skull, poisoning me with its psychopathic purple liquid,” Krieg mutters as he paces, one hand coming up to his face before dropping just as quickly; if it weren’t for the mask Axton thinks he might’ve started chewing on his fingernails. “We watched it all, and felt the knife edge split down the middle... _Can you hear me?!”_

Axton blinks.

He doesn’t know what to do with that.

He doesn’t know what to do with that, so they just stand there looking at each other, Axton trying to process _all of that_ while Krieg’s chest is rising and falling a little too fast, clearly trying to not fidget or move at all, his brown eye fixed on Axton.

Now Axton isn’t a quitter by any means, but he’s pretty sure he’s way in over his head. Maya would know what to do since she seemed to have complete faith in the guy the last time he saw her. Hell, he’s pretty sure _Hammerlock_ would have at least an idea of what to do since he and Krieg apparently get on like a house on fire for some weird reason.

There’s a fleeting thought of _‘Maybe Sarah was right’_ before it’s forced out by the memory of Maya’s words.

_‘There’s more to him than meets the eye.’_

So Axton looks at him. _Really_ looks at him. At a glance, one would just see a Psycho ranting and raving about nonsense and more than likely about to go off the deep end. And Axton’s been guilty of that line of thinking before – he was guilty of it on the train, though, to be fair, there weren’t many Psychos who were more than that.

And yeah, Axton doesn’t grasp the meaning behind most of what Krieg says, not in the way Maya or Hammerlock do, but that doesn’t mean he can’t understand the distress behind the words _when_ Krieg talks. And it’s not like Axton can’t put in a little effort to understand what is being said; it just might take some time.

If Maya saw something in this guy, Axton doesn’t see why he can’t make the effort to see it too.

(The diamond ring sits heavy in his pocket; he’d already made the mistake of not making an effort to listen before and it’s not a mistake Axton wants to make again.)

“Yeah, I can hear you,” Axton finally answers.

\---

_He dreams of a thousand purple tinged eyes and howling wind drowned out by louder howls of anguish and laughter dressed in bright orange jumpsuits._

_Down in the dark where the earth stinks of burning Eridium and iron. Down where it rains diamond dust and dull saw blades._

_A thousand purple tinged eyes but one._

\---

They leave when the storm passes.

The corpses of bandits are frozen and half buried in fresh snow.

Axton stops when he sees it. Half of a bright purple barrel that had exploded at some point – probably one of the ones from yesterday; there’s a familiar itch of a half remembered _something_ in the back of his mind. It’s gone just as quickly as it had arrived when Krieg lobs a snowball into the side of his face for taking too long.

(It probably wasn’t important anyway.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm kinda on the fence about how this chapter turned out; on one hand i like it, on the other, Krieg is hard to write despite how much i love him.


End file.
